US District Judge William Orrick has set June 26 as the date for the start of the trial of the Justice Department lawsuit opposing Microsoft Corp’s proposed $2,000m acquisition of Intuit Inc (it was announced at $1,500m but Microsoft shares have risen a fair bit since then: the judge said both sides have agreed that the public interest demands a speedy resolution of the legal and factual questions raised by the lawsuit; each side will have no more than 45 hours at trial to present its case, including examination of witnesses and presentation of legal arguments.
Compagnie des Machines Bull SA formally announced that first quarter sales were down 10.4% at the equivalent of $1,350m on a like-for-like basis or 6.5% at constant exchange rates: it said that after the successful completion of the first stage of its privatisation, growth of orders in April demonstrates the reversal of this tendency, adding that its partial privatisation had led some customers to defer purchasing decisions in several countries including France where this transition coincided with the pre-electoral period – the entire French information technology market was slow in the first quarter with an estimated revenue decline of 8% for the seven leading suppliers to it.
Vienna, Virginia-based America Online Inc, subject of stories of investors bailing out of its shares, says it has now surpassed 2.5m subscribers, more than tripling its user base over the past 12 months; the company also said its revenue run rate was at $500m, compared with $150m at this time last year.
L M Ericsson Telefon AB shares were trading at a new all-time high yesterday on hopes that the company will be a big winner in US Personal Communications Services equipment contracts: the Swedish company’s shares have risen by 25% this year.
IBM Corp has won a third repetitive strain injury case after a supermarket clerk who claimed she was injured from using keyboards developed by IBM and NCR Corp failed to prove negligence by the firms.
Motorola Inc told the annual meeting that large inventories of cellular telephones that built up during the fourth quarter of 1994 are returning to acceptable levels.
IBM Corp raised $1.96m with sale of 10 of its 300 works of art at Sotheby’s Holdings Inc in New York.
IBM Corp made record deliveries of its 390 mainframe family in 1994 and the first quarter of this year was equally good, vice-president Nick Donofrio told Les Echos: We have never delivered so many system 390s as last year, he said; Donofrio said IBM would bring out its top of the range personal computer server soon but would not say exactly when, adding we have not finished working on it – that was not to say there were problems, but IBM was working on other systems for personal applications, such as speech recognition, and needed a range of applications to market.
Oracle Corp senior vice-president Jerry Held said at DB Expo 95 that his company is well-positioned to take advantage of an expected surge this year in distributed computing.
A consortium of Belgian financial and media groups wants to join the Telenet Vlaanderen joint venture between the Flemish government and US West Inc, Dow Jones & Co reports: a spokesman for investment group Ackermans & Van Haaren NV, one of the consortium members, said we’ve asked to be integrated in the plans and expansion of this network, adding that the amount of funds required to invest isn’t yet determined; the consortium, organised by a company called Concentra, includes financial groups Lessius NV and Brinvest NV, and media groups De Persgroep, Tijd, Roularta and VTM; Telenet Vlaanderen aims to develop a broadband network to provide telecommunications and multimedia services to the 2m Flemish cable television subscribers.
Milpitas, California-based LSI Logic Corp is coming back again to try to buy out the 45% minority in its LSI Logic Corp of Canada Inc unit, this time offering $Can4 a share, compared with the earlier bid of $Can3.30 a share that
failed: the price should be enough but will still leave unhappy investors because the company was floated at $Can7.50 a share; the deal will cost the equivalent of about $31m.
A Boca Raton, Florida promoter of films and conventions, Dreamworks Production Group has filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit against Dreamworks SKG, the studio formed by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, seeking $25m damages; perhaps the studio would prefer to change its name.
Trucking company Ryder System Inc has decided that although it has 3090 mainframes and a host of AS/400s, it might be safer to give its systems integration contract to a neutral party, and has awarded the $2.5m business to Unisys Corp: Unisys will provide a range of services for the implementation and ongoing maintenance of more than 90 local area networks that will serve as the foundation of a new client-server system linking Ryder offices across the US; the networks will link to the IBM Corp AS/400s at Ryder’s district offices and, via a wide-area network, to 3090 mainframes at headquarters in Miami.
General Electric Co’s National Broadcasting Corp has formed NBC Digital Publishing, which will develop, package, market and distribute multimedia products on CD-ROM disks and other digital media; it has over 10 CD-ROM titles in development, most of which will come to the market within 18 months.
The Lisle, Illinois-based Tellabs Operations Inc unit of Tellabs Inc reports that UK cable operator TeleWest Communications Plc is testing delivery of integrated telecommunications and cable television services to residential customers using the Tellabs Cablespan system: at present, TeleWest provides telephony services using a separate digital overlay network independent of its cable television network.
Minorities and women will get a chance to acquire US Personal Communications Services licences at the Federal Communications Commission’s next auction in August: the Commission will put about 1,000 new licences for cities and metropolitan areas across the country on the block on August 2 and only minorities, women and small businesses with revenues of less than $125m and assets of less than $500m will be permitted to bid in the auction.
Digital Equipment Corp has handed its direct sales operations over to PCs Compleat Inc to handle in the US: PCs Compleat will produce and distribute DEC’s direct catalogues.
Winnersh, Berkshire-based Memorex Telex (UK) Ltd has become a Microsoft Solution Provider, accredited by Microsoft Corp for consultancy, integration, development, support and training on Microsoft products.
Cruel (funny though): an internal memo at Apple Computer Inc seen by MacWeek points out that historically, Microsoft’s operating system products have always sounded better six months before release than when they actually ship, and says It is important to remember that the only hardware platform that the final version of Windows95 is able to run on today is a slide projector!
